Watch Ted Crux Fall Apart When Asked About Disaster Relief Hypocrisy

As Texas tries to recover from the effects of Hurricane Harvey, Texas Republican Senator, Ted Cruz is literally begging the federal government for disaster relief aid. While many of us would agree that the state of Texas deserves federal money in order to clean up, rehouse and rebuild after this horrendous storm, we must also see the hypocrisy in all that is taking place.

If you turn back the clock to October of 2012, you may recall a Hurricane named Sandy. That hurricane devastated much of New Jersey and New York, causing $71.4 billion worth of damage. At that time, Cruz voted against providing federal aid to the state of New Jersey for storm damage. What is ironic though, is that Cruz has now gone on TV virtually begging the federal government for aid in his own state of Texas.

MSNBC’s Katy Tur had a chance to interview Cruz about this ridiculous hypocrisy. She specifically asked him how he would like to respond to his critics who have been calling him out as a hypocrite.

“Well, you know, look. There’s time for political sniping later,” Cruz initially stated. “I think our focus needs to be on this crisis.”

Tur responded, saying that it is in no way “political sniping”, explaining that she covered the victims of Hurricane Sandy at the time of the disaster and many of them lost absolutely everything.

“Katy that’s exactly right, and the accurate thing to say is that I and a number of others enthusiastically and emphatically supported hurricane relief for Hurricane Sandy,” Cruz responded, sounding quite unsure of himself. “Hurricane relief and disaster relief has been a vital federal role for a long, long time and it should continue. The problem with that particular bill is that it became a fifty billion dollar bill that was filled with unrelated pork, and what I said then, and what I still believe now is that it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster when people are hurting to pay for their own political wish list. Disaster relief needs to be focused on the victims of disaster relief, and I supported that for Sandy for disaster relief there, and I support that anywhere where there was a major disaster without getting distracted by political unnecessary pork spending.”

The problem with this statement by Cruz, is that it’s a blatant lie. In fact, the Congressional Research Service actually issued a report showing that virtually all of the relief funds were related to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Many republicans apparently feel as though states should be responsible for their own disaster relief, and that people living in states unaffected by hurricanes should not have to pay tax dollars to aid those states which are. However, we all live in the United States of America, and we wouldn’t be very “united” if we didn’t come to the aid of others when devastated, would we? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.